Topaz Cleaned DC3

[Steve H]

Her's one more that has been 'cleaned' with Topaz...

[Terry Tedor]

Being an aviation fan and working around aircraft most of the day, I find them all quite nice. I especially like
this last one. Wish I could learn to PP my images like this. Can you share any secrets or tips? Can you explain what you mean by "cleaned with Topaz"? I've fiddled with some of their trial versions, but I'm not sure what product you're referring to or even how to go about obtaining results even remotely close to this.

Regards, Terry

[Steve H]

Being an aviation fan and working around aircraft most of the day, I find them all quite nice. I especially like
this last one. Wish I could learn to PP my images like this. Can you share any secrets or tips? Can you explain what you mean by "cleaned with Topaz"? I've fiddled with some of their trial versions, but I'm not sure what product you're referring to or even how to go about obtaining results even remotely close to this.

Regards, Terry

Hi Terry,
Thanks for the comment, no secrets really - the first set had the usual flow of adjustments - crop/exposure/levels (darks,lights,highlights,shadows etc)/bit of CA adjustment/colour saturation and luminance/sharpening. No real set standard or order as every image is different. I use Lightroom 3 (beta) as my main editor, I've tried them all and found LR suits me the best. It has a very friendly user interface/module system with all the adjustments down the right hand side - you just work your way through them.

It's not perfect (yet) for example the clone tool is pretty useless (I'm hoping they will fix that when the full release comes out in the coming months). The beta release is free too by the way and fully functional until they release the full monty 3.0.


Having said that I do have PS elements 8 (for mac) as well, for layers and cloning and all other photoshop type stuff.

As for the last one I used Topaz Labs Clean https://www.topazlabs.com/
I really like the slightly animated/painterly effect it gives, not totally apparent on the version you see here but in the full version on my screen (1440x900) it is much more obvious, particularly around the fuel pump/undercarriage area and back on the mountains.

Once again this software is very easy to use, there are a bunch of presets down the left that will start you off then you can fine tune with sliders.

Sorry can't be more helpful than that, would suggest downloading trials of both and see how you go. The topaz suite is a plugin for photoshop but can be invoked from lightroom and aperture as well.

Let me (us) know if you have any specific problems and we'll try and sort you out. What system are using by the way PC or Mac? I'm a mac man myself (crossed over a few years back and never looked back) but there are plenty of PC sufferers, I mean users, here too.

What sort of aircraft are you working around/with? I'm tipping floatplanes or helicopters going by your location?

[Terry Tedor]

Thanks for the comment, no secrets really - the first set had the usual flow of adjustments - crop/exposure/levels (darks,lights,highlights,shadows etc)/bit of CA adjustment/colour saturation and luminance/sharpening. No real set standard or order as every image is different.

What caught my eye was the "smoothness" (for lack of a more technically accurate term) in the tonal gradations, especially in the blue of the tail and sky, and the white top of the aircraft. There's absolutely no hint, at this resolution, that this is digital. It is as continuous as a fine grain film emulsion. Is that the Topaz Detail that is giving that effect or is it in your adjustment of the darks, lights, highlights, and shadows? Am I correct in assuming that you're shooting RAW? Are you using ACR to make the initial adjustments to the RAW file? If it's not too much trouble, could you perhaps expand a little bit on how/what adjustments you're doing to the exposures/levels?

I use Lightroom 3 (beta) as my main editor, I've tried them all and found LR suits me the best. It has a very friendly user interface/module system with all the adjustments down the right hand side - you just work your way through them.

It's not perfect (yet) for example the clone tool is pretty useless (I'm hoping they will fix that when the full release comes out in the coming months). The beta release is free too by the way and fully functional until they release the full monty 3.0.

I've considered buying LR2, but am still in the process of learning CS4, as I recently upgraded to 4 from the original CS. Maybe I should give LR3 beta a whirl?

Having said that I do have PS elements 8 (for mac) as well, for layers and cloning and all other photoshop type stuff.

I have Elements 7. I bought it because Adobe did not release an update to ACR for CS that would read my 50D files, but Elements 7 would. I'd open in Elements 7 w/ACR and save as DNG then use CS to make further adjustments. Since upgrading to CS4, I don't know if I see a lot of need for Elements.

As for the last one I used Topaz Labs Clean https://www.topazlabs.com/ I really like the slightly animated/painterly effect it gives, not totally apparent on the version you see here but in the full version on my screen (1440x900) it is much more obvious, particularly around the fuel pump/undercarriage area and back on the mountains.

Once again this software is very easy to use, there are a bunch of presets down the left that will start you off then you can fine tune with sliders.

Sorry can't be more helpful than that, would suggest downloading trials of both and see how you go. The topaz suite is a plugin for photoshop but can be invoked from lightroom and aperture as well..

I tried Clean before upgrading to CS4, but didn't do too much experimenting with it. Maybe I'll have to revisit it and try to get a little more "creative" with it.

Let me (us) know if you have any specific problems and we'll try and sort you out. What system are using by the way PC or Mac? I'm a mac man myself (crossed over a few years back and never looked back) but there are plenty of PC sufferers, I mean users, here too.

Any chance of seeing before/after images so I could get an idea of where you started? I'm a PC user. Have toyed briefly with the idea of buying a Mac as my current setup is having stability issues. Just don't relish the idea of having to buy new version of current software to run on a Mac.

Any tips or suggestions you could give regarding PP or workflow would be most appreciated.

Thanks for your time,

Terry

[Steve H]

Is that the Topaz Detail that is giving that effect or is it in your adjustment of the darks, lights, highlights, and shadows? Am I correct in assuming that you're shooting RAW? Are you using ACR to make the initial adjustments to the RAW file? If it's not too much trouble, could you perhaps expand a little bit on how/what adjustments you're doing to the exposures/levels?

Hi Terry (sorry for the delay - been a bit busy). To answer your questions - Yes (in that last image) it was Topaz Clean (not Detail) that gives that smoothing effect as well as the unusual 'painted' effect in the mountains and grasses. Yes I shoot in RAW. I'll try to expand on my post processing a little later.

Maybe I should give LR3 beta a whirl?

Yes, I would - simply because of the user interface. Photoshop is a very advanced editor however it also requires the user to be quite knowledgeable in it's working's to use it to it's full potential. Lightroom (LR) on the other hand has all the adjustments 'out on show' for you in the Develop module so you just work down adjusting as required. There are a few exceptions but it's not too critical. The important thing is learning what all the sliders do and when you start to get good results you can then try the same thing in your CS4. The bottom line is there is no perfect solution or one package that does everything, more on that later.

Since upgrading to CS4, I don't know if I see a lot of need for Elements.

You don't need elements (now that you have CS4).

Any chance of seeing before/after images so I could get an idea of where you started?

Before Topaz Clean:



After:



As far as the PP/workflow is concerned I have spent eons on the net downloading trials, researching forums to find 'the best one' and have finally come to the conclusion that there isn't one. It's whatever is easiest to use for you and produces a pleasing image - for you, unless you're a commercial photographer and have to please the customer.

For me (currently/at the moment/right now/today) I shoot in raw, take memory card out of D90 into reader and use Bridge (it came with Mac Elements 8) to suck all the NEF's onto my iMac.

I then scan through them and delete the dodgy ones and then drag the folder or individual photo's onto the LR icon in the dock (mac speak for import photo's to LR).

As for the processing, quite difficult to 'teach' over the forum, also I don't know where you're at with all this at he moment however, what I do *edit*

started to type out my workflow but then realised that apart from sending everyone into a coma it would use up my monthly bandwidth allowance to post so what I would suggest is downloading the LR 3 beta (it's free and fully functional) and work through a few images of your own. Not trying to fob you off but PP can be quite lengthy and the best way to learn is just doing it yourself, sliding sliders and seeing results in your image. Once you learn the basics in LR you can use that knowledge back in CS4. LR is quite powerful and more than just an editor, I mentioned before I import RAW to mac via bridge, well I could have imported straight to LR as it has a very capable library/file management system. I just go to bridge at the moment so I don't have all my RAW 'locked' up in a LR database as I'm only 99% sure I'll buy the full version on release (just waiting to see if they fix one or two things).

If you do try it and get get stuck I'm more than happy to provide specific help on any LR topics and there are other's here who are more knowledgeable than I on CS4 if you go that way.

Cheers
p.s. maybe a mod can move this thread to "Image Post-Processing"?

[Dave Humphries]

p.s. maybe a mod can move this thread to "Image Post-Processing"?

Your wish is my command ...

I left the original set where they were, together with all the reminisences
DC3 visit to our Southern skies

Cheers,

[Terry Tedor]

Hi Terry (sorry for the delay - been a bit busy). To answer your questions - Yes (in that last image) it was Topaz Clean (not Detail) that gives that smoothing effect as well as the unusual 'painted' effect in the mountains and grasses. Yes I shoot in RAW. I'll try to expand on my post processing a little later.

Steve, no worries. Thanks for taking the time to put this in-depth response together. I'm going to download the LR3 beta and give it a whirl. It will take me some time to do that and reread everything you wrote here and try to absorb it all. I'll be back with you in a day or so, so please be patient wiht me. Until then, thanks again for your time and efforts

Terry

[ScoutR]

If you do try it and get get stuck I'm more than happy to provide specific help on any LR topics and there are other's here who are more knowledgeable than I on CS4 if you go that way.

Hi Steve: Could you tell what the minimum sharpening radius is in LR Beta 3.0. I have ver. 2.5 and the minimum Radius is .5

I agree LR is very user friendly and I like it a lot, but as advised here and other places, sharpening with .5 radius does not give very good results and i usually end up going to the Elements Editor and using USM sharpening which allows the use of a smaller radius. I was hoping this might have been changed with the new versions.

This was a very helpful thread. You know how to ask the right questions Terry, and thanks to Steve for the detailed and well thought out answers. I really like the smooth look of the Topaz shot, and have not been able to find a "smothing" processs for certain shots - this might be the answer

Wendy

[ScoutR]

The topaz suite is a plugin for photoshop but can be invoked from lightroom and aperture as well.

Hello Steve: Me again, I just downloaded a trial of Topaz Clean. I have it installed and working in Elements 8, but I cannot figure out how to get it working in Lightroom.

Could you help me out with this. I've looked on the Topaz website, and also in Lightroom help, but I cannot find anything

Thanks
Wendy

[Terry Tedor]

This was a very helpful thread. You know how to ask the right questions Terry, and thanks to Steve for the detailed and well thought out answers. I really like the smooth look of the Topaz shot, and have not been able to find a "smothing" processs for certain shots - this might be the answer

Wendy

Thank you Wendy! I feel like I'm "drinking from a fire hose" with all the information that's being presented in every post I read. So much to absorb and learn, which is good, very, very good!

I thank all who are willing to share and teach.

[Steve H]

Hi Steve: Could you tell what the minimum sharpening radius is in LR Beta 3.0. I have ver. 2.5 and the minimum Radius is .5

Wendy

Hi Wendy,
Well in the beta 3 it's still 0.5 to 3.0 for radius but I think the sharpening is one of the best features of LR. I tend to always end up with a radius of between 1 and 2 anyway.

I stumbled across a topic in another forum recently (can't remember where) but someone had posted a short tutorial on LR sharpening, basically it goes like this:

Do all your normal edits then go down to the sharpening module, hit the space bar to bring the image up to 100%, drag it around to centre on your primary subject for sharpening, hold down the option key (I'm on a mac - maybe 'alt' in pc world?) then drag your top sharpening slider to the right - I use a D90 and find that around 70-80 works for me (sometimes more sometimes less), yours may vary with different digital sensor and lens combo's.

Then do the same for next slider - radius - hold down the option (alt) key and adjust slider till it looks good - anywhere between 1 and 2 for me. Holding down the alt key (I think) puts the image into luminance mode so you can see what you're actually doing, this also works for CA adjustment and a few other things - really cool. Well done Adobe.

Then do the same for detail....

Then the biggie, hold down option (alt) and slide masking way to the right - you'll see it does some auto masking thing so you can set what gets sharpened and what doesn't. I sometimes end up way over at 90 or higher depending on how much sky there is etc that you don't want sharpened.

Once I discovered this I was gobsmacked, I find it really effective. Then there's always the local brush edits (sharpening and others) that you can do.

Ok, teas ready now - roast chook - will answer your other question later.

Cheers

[Steve H]

Hello Steve: Me again, I just downloaded a trial of Topaz Clean. I have it installed and working in Elements 8, but I cannot figure out how to get it working in Lightroom.

Could you help me out with this. I've looked on the Topaz website, and also in Lightroom help, but I cannot find anything

Thanks
Wendy

Hey Wendy
Back again. OK, I had a few 'issues' getting it to work under LR too but it can be done, quite easily in fact.

But firstly I don't know if you're on PC or mac. The reason I ask is that if you are on a mac they (Topaz) have a free download software product called 'Fusion Express' that integrates all topaz products with Aperture, Lightroom and iPhoto. If so, download and install it.

Then you will need to tell LR that you want to use it as an external editor. LR by default looks for and assigns a version of photoshop as the primary external editor. At the moment (in beta 3) it only 'finds' elements 4 (not sure about CS versions). I have elements 8 and elements 4 and it automatically assigned 4 as the primary "right click, edit in ......" editor.

However, you can assign other external editors. Once again, on a mac, I go to preferences and then 'External Editing'. The top box is for the primary editor that LT itself assigns - a version of photoshop. The next box down is where you can assign your own editors i.e. elements 8 or topaz etc.

I have elements 8 and Topaz fusion assigned as separate presets here so when I right click an image in the library I have options to edit in Elements 8 or Topaz.

When I assigned Topaz I 'chose' fusion.app as when that runs I get to choose either 'Clean' or 'Detail' or 'Denoise' or whatever all the others are (I purchased the bundle).

I presume if you just have 'clean' the you can point LR towards that app?

Let me know if you're PC or mac and if any of this makes sense , or not and you need further help.

[ScoutR]

Let me know if you're PC or mac and if any of this makes sense , or not and you need further help.

Thank you so much. I am on a PC running Windows 7.

I found where to set up the external editors in LR and it looks pretty strait forward. The only problem is that LR wants an executable file and I cannot find a .exe file anywhere in any of the Topaz directories. This might be because they are trials or it could be some "stupid" Windows 7 thing. I have Windows set up so I can see file extensions and system files, and I can see them on all my other programs, so it might be because this is a trial version of Topaz.

Unless you know something off the top of your head, I don't want you to spend a lot more time on this. I will check out the Windows end of things, but I will not worry about setting it up for LR unless I decide to purchase the full versions. Right now they are set up in Elements, and I usually end up there anyway, so I will just work from there.

Thanks for your time and help. I am trying out Clean, De-Noise, and Detail. Clean and Detail look pretty promising so far, I'm not so sure about De-Noise though.

Wendy

[Steve H]

Hi Wendy,
Just had a look at the Topaz site under compatibility for Windows versions and.....

"Adobe Photoshop 7 through CS4, Adobe Photoshop Elements 1-8, or another editor that supports Photoshop plug-ins. These include: Irfanview, PaintShop Pro, etc."

May not work under LR for windows users (yet)?

[ScoutR]

Hi Wendy,
Just had a look at the Topaz site under compatibility for Windows versions and.....

"Adobe Photoshop 7 through CS4, Adobe Photoshop Elements 1-8, or another editor that supports Photoshop plug-ins. These include: Irfanview, PaintShop Pro, etc."

May not work under LR for windows users (yet)?

Yes, that is the info I saw. I thought maybe LR was included in the etc. It didn't click in with me that you were a Mac user.

I think you are right, it does not work in the LR Windows combo. Stuff not working in Windows 7 seems to be quite a common occurance. Hope everyone catches up soon before some "Wonderful" new OS comes out.

Anyway the instructions for getting it set up in Elements were very clear and everything is working fine there. I can get by with that.

Thanks again
Wendy

[Keith Reeder]

Hmmm... all I see is significant detail loss and an "oil painting" look in the NRd image.

I think the original image looks way better I'm afraid.

[Terry Tedor]

Hi Wendy,
Well in the beta 3 it's still 0.5 to 3.0 for radius but I think the sharpening is one of the best features of LR. I tend to always end up with a radius of between 1 and 2 anyway.

I stumbled across a topic in another forum recently (can't remember where) but someone had posted a short tutorial on LR sharpening, basically it goes like this:

Do all your normal edits then go down to the sharpening module, hit the space bar to bring the image up to 100%, drag it around to centre on your primary subject for sharpening, hold down the option key (I'm on a mac - maybe 'alt' in pc world?) then drag your top sharpening slider to the right - I use a D90 and find that around 70-80 works for me (sometimes more sometimes less), yours may vary with different digital sensor and lens combo's.

Then do the same for next slider - radius - hold down the option (alt) key and adjust slider till it looks good - anywhere between 1 and 2 for me. Holding down the alt key (I think) puts the image into luminance mode so you can see what you're actually doing, this also works for CA adjustment and a few other things - really cool. Well done Adobe.

Then do the same for detail....

Then the biggie, hold down option (alt) and slide masking way to the right - you'll see it does some auto masking thing so you can set what gets sharpened and what doesn't. I sometimes end up way over at 90 or higher depending on how much sky there is etc that you don't want sharpened.

Once I discovered this I was gobsmacked, I find it really effective. Then there's always the local brush edits (sharpening and others) that you can do.

Ok, teas ready now - roast chook - will answer your other question later.

Cheers

FYI -

The same ALT or OPTION key works for Adobe RAW too, sending it into Luminance Mode. It only works if the zoom level is 100%. I just learned that this morning by reading my copy of "Real World Camera RAW" (imagine that!).

I downloaded and installed LR3 beta the other night, but haven't fooled with it too much. I've been fighting an uncooperative computer. I did notice after the install that any directory accessed through LR3 doesn't want to play nice in Bridge. EXIF data is terribly slow to display and the preview images are fuzzy. Can't seem to find any info at the Adobe LR3 beta forum.

[ScoutR]

FYI -

The same ALT or OPTION key works for Adobe RAW too, sending it into Luminance Mode. It only works if the zoom level is 100%. I just learned that this morning by reading my copy of "Real World Camera RAW" (imagine that!).

I downloaded and installed LR3 beta the other night, but haven't fooled with it too much. I've been fighting an uncooperative computer. I did notice after the install that any directory accessed through LR3 doesn't want to play nice in Bridge. EXIF data is terribly slow to display and the preview images are fuzzy. Can't seem to find any info at the Adobe LR3 beta forum.

Thanks for the tip on ACR. I gave up on sharpening in LR and ACR, but I will give this method a try and see how it goes.

I wish I could help you out with the LR issues, but I don't have Photoshop or Bridge so I can't go near that one. I will keep my eyes open though if I see or read anything that seems to relate to your issue I will post it here.

Wendy

[ScoutR]

Once I discovered this I was gobsmacked, I find it really effective. Then there's always the local brush edits (sharpening and others) that you can do.

Belated Thanks on this one. I completly missed this post, until Terry replied.

I have copied out these instructions and will give it a try. The method you posted is nothing like what I have been doing. I gave up on sharpening in LR (and ACR) because everything always ended up coming out worse than when I started. I've been able to get better results with methods I learned here for sharpening using USM in the Elements Editor. I'll see how the LR method you posted goes and maybe I can skip Elements once and awhile.

Thanks again

[ScoutR]

I downloaded and installed LR3 beta the other night, but haven't fooled with it too much. I've been fighting an uncooperative computer. I did notice after the install that any directory accessed through LR3 doesn't want to play nice in Bridge. EXIF data is terribly slow to display and the preview images are fuzzy. Can't seem to find any info at the Adobe LR3 beta forum.

Terry: I don't know if the video linked below will help with your problem. I don't use Bridge so I did not watch all the way through. The description says:

"Learn the basics of Lightroom's catalog. We cover where Lightroom stores your previews and metadata, how it links to your source files, and how to use Lightroom with Bridge."

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/george-jar...troom-catalog/